The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me this will take time but there is order here very faint very human. Meander if you want to get to town.

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

In the case of my book I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy he betrays his teacher the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience etc.

As a teacher at Princeton I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel in one sense is a problem-solving exercise.

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy like that of the historian must be unbounded and untainted by sect or party.

I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics sports culture and crime and write it up on deadline.

Monday Night Football started in 1970 and when it started it was something extremely special because sports had not been aired in prime time. So it was a novelty and a lot of people thought it wouldn't work and of course it worked spectacularly well.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages sometimes I write them in a column sometimes in a novel sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'